To Rebuild Trust After Pruitt, EPA Should Ban These Toxic Chemicals

Thanks to President Donald Trump, Americans' confidence in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has never been lower.

Since taking office, Trump and his minions have sought to roll back 76 environmental safeguards, according to Harvard Law School's regulatory rollback tracker. Trump's decisions have created a toxic mess of more air and water pollution. One study estimated that former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's proposal to weaken air quality standards could lead to 80,000 extra deaths per decade.

No wonder Pruitt's approval rating was even lower than President Trump's—that is, before the scandal-plagued administrator "resigned" last week.

This week, acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler replaced Pruitt. But it will take more than a commitment to greater transparency, which Wheeler pledged, to rebuild trust in Trump's EPA.

The EPA had planned to ban chlorpyrifos and some uses of the other three chemicals. But Pruitt reversed or delayed those bans indefinitely. Even though Pruitt recently announced plans to move forward on the proposed ban on methylene chloride in paint strippers, he left many details unanswered.

Under its new leadership, the EPA should not wait to finally ban chlorpyrifos, and to end certain uses of NMP and TCE. The EPA should move quickly on plans to finally ban methylene chloride in paint strippers. What's more, the agency shouldn't cook the booksas it considers the fate of asbestos—which causes lung cancer—and other new and old chemicals, as Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., wrote in a letter to Wheeler.

If Andrew Wheeler wants to restore faith in the EPA, he should start by protecting Americans from these toxic chemicals.

Sixteen-year-old climate action leader Greta Thunberg stood alongside European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker Thursday in Brussels as he indicated—after weeks of climate strikes around the world inspired by the Swedish teenager—that the European Union has heard the demands of young people and pledged more than $1 trillion over the next seven years to address the crisis of a rapidly heating planet.

In the financial period beginning in 2021, Juncker said, the EU will devote a quarter of its budget to solving the crisis.

A new study reveals the health risks posed by the making, use and disposal of plastics. Jeffrey Phelps / Getty Images

With eight million metric tons of plastic entering the world's oceans every year, there is growing concern about the proliferation of plastics in the environment. Despite this, surprisingly little is known about the full impact of plastic pollution on human health.

But a first-of-its-kind study released Tuesday sets out to change that. The study, Plastic & Health: The Hidden Costs of a Plastic Planet, is especially groundbreaking because it looks at the health impacts of every stage in the life cycle of plastics, from the extraction of the fossil fuels that make them to their permanence in the environment. While previous studies have focused on particular products, manufacturing processes or moments in the creation and use of plastics, this study shows that plastics pose serious health risks at every stage in their production, use and disposal.